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swarming season

This week, our normally quiet little homestead was all abuzz (literally!) with activity. The honeybees have declared that swarming season is officially now. Five swarms have issued from my two hives in five days. I was able to catch and hive three of them, and the other two were in easy reach but departed so quickly I barely had time to catch my breath after standing in the midst of the spiraling frenzy of thousands of stinging insects.

I have never minded having my beehives swarm as long as the remaining colony is strong and healthy. I may change my tune someday, but to me, swarming gives me hope that the dwindling honeybee populations have a chance to rebound. Even when I don’t catch the swarms, as I watch them take off through the canopy of the forest, I blow them a kiss and wish them strength and health and longevity. I also fantasize they will find a suitable home that is so wild and isolated that no GMO crops are to be found anywhere in their foraging range. (That is a pretty hard bill to fill these days, unfortunately) I have also never particularly tried to stop the swarms from happening in the first place, as I know many beekeepers do (I also don’t make my livelihood from beekeeping), so I guess it is a good thing I don’t really care when it happens. If I had invested time and energy in trying to suppress swarming I suppose I would feel differently!I’m not sure what the difference was this year, but each of the five swarms was accessible to my desiring hands. Last year, to the best of my knowledge and observation, I had four swarms come from the same two hives and every single one of them was at least forty feet up in the air. Two of those were probably upwards of seventy feet. My sweet husband even went so far as to put the extension ladder in the fully extended loader of the tractor, but to no avail… he still couldn’t reach. This year, the kiwi trellis attached to our outdoor kitchen seemed to be the hot spot for the honeybees to congeal after the mass exodus from the hive. Four of this year’s swarms landed there, a mere eight feet off of the ground. Kind of a dream come true!!! But because of the gangly nature of the kiwi vines, and the structure of the trellis, I had to slowly scoop or brush the bees into the hive boxes; I couldn’t just snip a branch and lower the whole mass into their new home. The one remaining swarm was slightly higher in a mulberry tree, and this did require some monkeying around to be able to reach. Oh, but sweet satisfaction in succeeding on that one! I can only guess that the two swarms that I missed left so quickly because it was threatening to rain or they had already scoped out a new home. But I am not a bee, so I will never really know for certain. What I do know is that I have THREE new beehives! And that I need to order or build some new equipment pretty darn quick because I had to piece together hives for the swarms in a hodgepodge fashion and I have no hive bodies remaining when it comes time for expansion! Or, heaven help us, if another swarm comes!!!

The fact that I was able to witness all but one of these swarms actually happen (and Opal saw the one I didn’t) seems like a very generous gift from the cosmos. Especially since it is spring and there is quite a frenzy of farming and lambing happening right now as well. (More on those next time.) So I will say my thank-yous to the forces that may be, and declare myself even more intrigued by the mysterious honeybee than ever before.